February 17, 2011
By Staff Reporter
It was one lesson learnt after the attacks of 9/11, when highly qualified personnel were turned away from police lines. That mistake won’t be made again, if the Department of Homeland Security has its way. It is training a select percentage of the nation’s 11 million first-responders to deal with a variety of emergencies, such as a chemical-weapon attack using sarin.
And in the process, the County Kildare-raised Malone has become the first foreign-born responder to complete all Homeland Security courses.
His identity card has digitalized information that tells the authorities he is trained for an emergency situation.
Malone has just completed a training week offered by the Center for Domestic Preparedness at Fort McClellan in Alabama. He’d been at a previous training at Fort McClellan and has done two in Albuquerque, N.M. He will spend another two stints away from his South District Fire Department later in the year in Utah and in Nevada.
“You don’t get to see much, except for airports and the inside of a suit,” said the married father of 9- and 4-year-old boys. He was referring to a “Level B suit,” which fully encapsulates a responder dealing with airborne nerve agents.
“It’s draining,” said the 39-year-old firefighter. “We’re up at 5 each morning.”
It’s rather sobering, too, being in a room with a substance like sarin, a small drop of which could kill 1,100 people, or blister agents.
Homeland Security is training personnel with the view that such attacks will happen.
Malone, who can be deployed in either New York or Boston, said of weapons of mass destruction: “They’re so easily obtainable; that’s the scary part.”